Students’ ideas about dangerous animals

The aim of this article was to study the concepts and thoughts of primary education students about dangerous animals. A total of 316 primary education students attending a primary school in Turkey participated in the study. The research data was obtained through open-ended questions and word association tests. Data obtained from the questions directed at the students were analysed one-by-one. As the students made many associations, words of the same or similar meaning were coded together. Associations encountered less than three times, and those that could not be coded with the others, were removed. Certain categories were formed according to relationships of meaning, and the usage frequency of the words in each category was calculated quantitatively. As a result of the analysis of the data, it was found that students considered the features that make animals dangerous include: being venomous, having a large size, being vicious and wild, and also being sneaky. Furthermore, students think that vertebrate animals are more dangerous than invertebrates. They are not sufficiently aware of significantly dangerous small and harmful invertebrates that can cause death. Furthermore, it has been observed that the students have significantly insufficient knowledge and alternative concepts of animals such as snakes, scorpions, spiders and centipedes. In the light of these results, suggestions have been developed.